Firstly, try contacting [email protected] detailing what you'd like to build and see if they're interested / able to collaborate or provide you the necessary access / APIs.

I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but have contacted the mods from time to time and found them eminently approachable.

Secondly, if you can't see the up or down vote buttons, try clicking on a comment or submissions time stamp immediately after the username. For reasons I don't know sometimes the vote buttons aren't displayed in the regular view.